AND is better or using Internal “IF” [duplicate]

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• Is it bad practice to use short-circuit evaluation instead of an if clause? [duplicate] 7 answers

In a situation like this:"

if ((metadata != null) && (metadata.TypeEnum != VariantInfoMetadata.CellTypeEnum.Status))

do you recommend to keep the code as it is above? Or is it better to make a nested "if" statement and breaks the condition into two sections where "outer if" makes sure metadata is not null and inner if does the rest of the checking. I think a nested if takes care of possible null reference exception if value of metadata gets null.